GUEST POST: JENNA @RAIN ON A TIN ROOF

Hey there! I’m Jenna from Rain on a Tin Roof. I am so happy to be sharing here at On the Way Home today. Sarah is a great gal with an awesome blog! Thanks for having me today, Sarah!

A little about me:

First off, I am terrible at “About Me-s.” In fact, so terrible, that I use pictures (entertaining ones) on my own About Me page at Rain on a Tin Roof. Its quite comical. In short, I’m a southern gal who loves some serious thrifting, crafting, re-purposing, and home diy-ing, which is what my blog is all about. This decorating thing started early for me. While other 14 year olds wanted to read Seventeen, I was reading Christopher Lowell’s Seven Layers of Design (Does anyone even remember Christopher Lowell?!), and re-arranging my bedroom. I can handle a power saw with the best of ‘em, but tend to make my Grunt Labor (hubby) use the power tools. (It makes him feel special to be needed. Total reverse psychology, y’all.) A comfortable, eye-pleasing room just warms my soul, and makes me dang proud its mine. I love turning something old and decrepit into something new and amazing. I even started carting my daughter around to yard sales when she was a month old, its important to train ‘em early around here. My whole decorating mantra is to do it frugally. Thrift it. Craft it. DIY it. If this hasn’t bored you enough, you can read more about me here.

I loved how the first monogrammed tray I did turned out. Lindsay loved getting it for her birthday, and it is beautiful in her home. In fact, I loved it so much that I made another one for a friend who is getting married in October and I have one for myself in the works.

This one is Ashley’s that I gave her at her bridal tea a few weeks ago. I did it a little differently than the last one I did.

With the last one, which you can read about here, I used leftover trim to make the bottom. For Ashley’s, we didn’t have enough trim for the bottom and sides, so I bought a piece of MDF at Lowe’s. Grunt Labor had it cut to size and put together before I could snap a shot of the materials. Here is what it looked like together.

Pretty basic. He just cut the MDF into rectangles and cut the trim to fit around it. He used a finish nailer and wood glue to hold it all together. I primed it with gray spray paint primer and mixed up some chalk paint with some white and dark blue paint samples I had to get the light blue color. From looking at the comments on some pins from my last DIY monogram tray, I think there were some questions about how I did the monogram without a Silhouette or painting it. It was really simple. All I did was create the monogram in word. I used the free Cursif font I found here. I just typed in the letters and made the “H” bigger than the other two initials.I printed out the monogram on regular printer paper then I cut out the letters and taped them to some textured scrapbook paper.

I cut them out with a pair of scissors and an X-Acto knife for the really tight spaces.

Next, I just laid the letters on the tray, centered them, and used Mod-Podge to adhere them. I finished the whole thing off with a gloss topcoat.

I bought the handles at Hobby Lobby. They were originally rust brown. I sprayed them with gloss white.

The tray seemed to be a huge hit. The bride loved it (or at least put on a really good show acting like she did! haha, I’m kidding, Ashley!) and everyone at the tea gave it wonderful compliments, which made me feel pretty great! Oh and fun fact: The bride’s name is Ashley. Guess what the groom’s name is?! Ashley, too! Isn’t that fantastic!? I can’t wait to see how they screw with people’s minds on that one!